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Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky ((ロシア語:Серге́й Леони́дович Магни́тский); 8 April 1972 – 16 November 2009) was a Russian accountant and auditor whose arrest and subsequent murder in custody generated international media attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft and human rights violations. Magnitsky had alleged there had been a large-scale theft from the Russian state sanctioned and carried out by Russian officials. He was arrested and eventually died in prison seven days before the expiration of the one-year term during which he could be legally held without trial. In total, Magnitsky served 358 days in Moscow's notorious Butyrka prison. He developed gall stones, pancreatitis and a blocked gall bladder and received inadequate medical care. A human rights council set up by the Kremlin found that he was beaten up just before he died. His case has become an international ''cause célèbre'' and led to the adoption of the Magnitsky bill by the US government at the end of 2012 by which those Russian officials believed to be involved in the auditor’s death were barred from entering the United States or using its banking system. In response, Russia blocked hundreds of foreign adoptions. In early January 2013, the ''Financial Times'' editorialised that "the Magnitsky case is egregious, well documented and encapsulates the darker side of Putinism"〔 p. 8.〕 and endorsed the idea of imposing similar sanctions against the implicated Russian officials by the EU countries.〔 In 2013, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit news organization, obtained records of companies and trusts created by two offshore companies which included information on at least 23 companies linked to an alleged $230 million tax fraud in Russia, a case that was being investigated by Sergei Magnitsky. The ICIJ investigation also revealed that the husband of one of the Russian tax officials deposited millions in a Swiss bank account set up by one of the offshore companies.〔 ==Background== Magnitsky was an auditor at the Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan.〔()〕 He represented the investment advisory firm Hermitage Capital Management, which had been accused of tax evasion and tax fraud by the Russian Interior Ministry. He was a specialist in civil law. Over the years of its operation, Hermitage had on a number of occasions supplied to the press information related to corporate and governmental misconduct and corruption within state-owned Russian enterprises. Hermitage's company co-founder Bill Browder was soon expelled from Russia as a national threat. Browder himself has indicated that he represented only a threat "to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats" in Russia, believing that the ouster was conducted to leave his company open for exploitation.〔 In November 2005, Browder arrived in Moscow to be told his visa had been annulled. He was deported the next day and has not seen his Moscow home for 10 years.〔 On June 4, 2007, Hermitage's Moscow office was raided by about 20 Ministry of Interior officers. The offices of Firestone Duncan were also raided. The officers had a search warrant alleging that Kamaya, a company administered by Hermitage, had underpaid its taxes. This was highly irregular as the Russian tax authorities had just confirmed in writing that this company had overpaid its tax. In both cases, the search warrants permitted the seizure of materials related only to Kamaya. However, in both cases the officers illegally seized all the corporate, tax documents and seals for any company which had paid a large amount of Russian tax including documents and seals for many of Hermitage's Russian companies. In October 2007, Browder received word that one of the firms maintained in Moscow had a judgement against it for an alleged unpaid debt of hundreds of millions of dollars. According to Browder, this was the first he had heard of this court case and he did not know the lawyers who represented his company in court.〔 Magnitsky was given the assignment of investigating what had happened. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sergei Magnitsky」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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